I hope all the mothers out there are getting to do something they enjoy today! I am not a mom, but I am a Stepmom and a pet mom so I am still going to celebrate by doing some crafting. 🙂

I woke up with some back pain, but I was still ready to create and even had some ideas in my head! I noticed the Pumpkin challenge is posted and it is to make tags. This totally makes sense as we received some tags in our April Paper Pumpkin Kit. With that said, I have to admit I am not much of a tag person. I don’t have many actual gifts I give out these days as I am usually giving cash. That is why cards are my go to craft. At any rate, I decided to see if I could make a card with some tags on it! I also needed some inspiration for what I wanted the card to look like. I got just that over at Create with Cathy and Mary. Their current challenge is to use the following colors: Calypso Coral, Bermuda Bay and Daffodil Delight. Ooooh what a pretty color combination!! I needed to make a birthday card for a little lady and she is just as bright and happy as these colors so it was a marriage made in heaven!

I hadn’t used my FAVORITE Stampin up set in a while – good ole Gorgeous Grunge. It is so funny to think that before I got that set I wavered on whether or not I would use it enough – HA! Anyway, I always love how that set gives a card some pizzazz! I was also able to pull out my new Honeycomb embossing folder I got with my last Stampin’ Up order. I can already tell I will put that to good use. Hope you like the card and that you get to create something today!

Supplies used:

Inks: Calypso Coral and Bermuda Bay

Paper: Daffodil Delight, Bermuda Bay and Whisper White

Stamps: Glitter Greetings Photopolymer Stamps from March 2014 Paper Pumpkin, Gorgeous Grunge and the sentiment is from Really Good Greetings

Tools: Sunburst Die and Honeycomb embossing folder

Embellishments: Candy dots in Calypso Coral, Bermuda Bay and Daffodil Delight and the ribbon is actually Tangerine Tango but I thought it looked close enough

I had a nice time today spending time with the family. We went to see a Captain America, the Winter Soldier and thought it was pretty good. When we got home I had just enough time to see if I could do some crafting and I remembered I really hadn’t tried to do anything with the Paper Pumpkin I received in March. I headed over to the My Pumpkin Challenge Blog for some inspiration. The theme is Special Moments right now. I am sure that is because the kit came with these adorable wood veneer die cuts:

They are a really nice size and I plan on saving the congrats to use in my scrapbooking. So I decided I needed another special moment and I felt that can be just remembering to send the special people in our lives cards for no reason at all. Once I decided that, here is what I came up with:

I love the mix of blues in this card. The little pops of glitter were part of the my paper pumpkin kit and it really grabs your attention next to these colors. Supplies for this card include: My paper pumpkin March 2014 kit – Card, stamps(chevron and arrow) and glitter dots. Inks: Island Indigo, Pool Party and Sahara Sand. Stamps: Hello Friend sentiment from the Peachy Keen set and Flowers from the Sale-A-Bration Petal Parade. Ribbon: Pool Party. Cardstock: Bermuda Bay, Whisper White and Natural color I had from elsewhere.

It is such a pretty card and I am sure some lovely friend I have will enjoy receiving it!

I decided to take a stab at the Operation Write Home Sunday Sketch a day late. Since it is St. Patrick’s Day, I dug out green papers. The deadline has already passed for Sending OWH St. Patrick’s day Cards, but I figured I could at least use a nice green color in my sketch. Check it out:

Lots of pretty green with just a pop of yellow! I am still using left over pieces of my Paper Pumpkin from last month. It is really fun to try to use the items received in that kit in a different way. This card was pretty simple, just needed to make various cuts of paper and then find an embellishment I liked. I believe this could easily be masculine or feminine.

Like this:

I have been doing a lot of blog hopping lately and I keep finding fun challenges everywhere. The best thing about challenges is that they get you to think about doing things differently. Also, I tend to use papers and stamps I may have forgotten about. Thanks to Sarah over at The Handmade Card Blog I found another challenge to check out. It is Cas-ual Fridays. The most recent challenge is to make something with two shades of gray. So I dug through my stuff and realized, hey have some gray cards leftover from the Paper Pumpkin kit I got last month. Let me see what I can come up! Here it is:

What a simple card to make! The challenge said we should use two colors of gray… I am stretching it a bit by using the gray card base as one color and the rhinestones are the second gray color 😉 I really just wanted to use up some other scraps I had to make this card so I added some bright colors in there too. The vellum is fun to work with, though I was a little stumped on how to attach it without adhesive showing through. I got creative by wrapping the vellum all the way around the card on to the inside and then adhering it on the inside of the card with some paper over the top to cover things up. It actually worked quite well.

Most of this card is made from my Paper Pumpkin received in the mail. Paper Pumpkin is a monthly subscription from Stampin’ up that allows you to make quick and easy creations. I just started the subscription and the card you make from it actually looks like this:

This is the starter kit. You can tell there are bits and pieces of that in my card. The kits you receive after this one are a SURPRISE. Fun, right? I also found another challenge website – My Pumpkin Challenge – where they ask you to make a variation of the suggested Paper Pumpkin card or project and share it on their site. I am anxiously awaiting my next Paper Pumpkin kit so I can see what I can come up with and submit it.

Okay I need to get back to work. Happy Tuesday and go find some time to create today if you can!